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Thoughts on Facebook

It seems like every few months I go through a period of time where I want to cut myself from the tether that is Facebook. Today is one of those days. I have a love/hate relationship with the social media website. Well, love might be too strong a word. Maybe it’s more like tolerate/hate. On the one hand, I really like how it connects us to each other. I love some of the conversations I have had on there. I love that I can connect with my nieces and nephews and brothers and sister and friends and acquaintances. I love connecting and interacting with people.

However, lately I have logged onto Facebook and have felt bad after my session. Why is this? I guess, if I were being honest with myself, I would say that this is probably some kind of reflection of myself. Facebook is just a website. It can’t make me feel bad. It’s an inanimate object. I determine my feelings.

This is a nice thought. However, I can’t deny the feelings I get sometimes when I log on. I am not alone, according to a Stanford study.

How does Facebook make me feel? Inadequate. Invisible. These feelings cause me to overcompensate by feeling the need to overshare. Then I look at this reflection of myself and I dislike it very much. Self-loathing.

I don’t like the facade, the fake person, we create in order to look good to others. I wonder if this is just human nature but in real life it is easier for us to see through because there is body language and other, non-verbal ways of communication. It’s just easier to see through all of it in person.

I kind of want to just let it all hang out on Facebook. Instead of writing about all of the awesome things I am doing I want to post every mundane, boring thing I do. I want to talk about how crappy my day was. I want to talk about how, instead of going running like I planned to do, I was lazy and read my book instead. I want to be the totally imperfect person that I really am. Not the fake Facebook facade that I have created.

I am trying to reconcile my feelings. I wrote most of this post yesterday when I was feeling down. Today I am feeling better. Obviously those negative feelings are there in the undercurrent and they surface on those bad days. I want to take a look at them and figure them out.

I would really like to hear your thoughts. How do you feel about Facebook? Do you like it? Hate it? Are you one of those who has deleted your account? If so, why? What made you cut the thread?

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5 thoughts on “Thoughts on Facebook”

I loathe facebook. I find it frustrating and facile and, and… so many bad words. On the other hand. It’s the most common denominator everybody and their dog is over there including a bunch of the people I do want to interact with that aren’t really online anywhere else. I took a good long break (Feb 1 – nearly the end of April according to the FB timeline). I lurked a bit but really mostly ignored it. I took it off my phone (shortly after you did actually). I think that my interactions will be more genuine going forward and it will also be a lot easier to delete or hide those over there that make it uncomfortable for me. Thankfully most of those folks are casual acquaintances so I don’t have to have face to face conversations about why did I un-friend racist uncle So&so or homophobic cousin Jerkface.

I feel exactly the same way. Loathe is a good word for it. Yet that is where people are online, so I don’t want to delete my account. I am leaning toward limiting my time. I feel better since I deleted it off my phone. I also turned off e-mail notifications. We’ll see how that goes.

I’m fine with it, but frankly, I don’t get out much. 😉 For the most part, the people on my list are largely not-annoying, so that helps. The craziest of relatives aren’t even on there, my mom’s not on there, etc. I like to be able to keep in touch with people, but a good half of my list is people who I haven’t met in person, some of that through my writing travels.

I feel like I have a fairly good balance of positive/negative posts, with a heaping dollop “This is so stupid I find it hilarious.” As you know. But even before FB, that’s basically how I’ve conducted myself — I’m me, I talk about what interests me, and you get what you get.

Published by Moni

I am a Children's Librarian living in the Portland, Oregon area. When I am not Children's Librianing I like to play with cameras and film. I also like playing the ukulele, knitting, sketching, and hiking.
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